These 5 NASDAQ Stocks Just Hit Their 52-Week Highs

Equities have seen a pullback amid uncertainty regarding the Federal Reserve’s plans to hike the interest rates. More specifically, the NASDAQ Composite Index has seen drop from its record highs registered earlier in the month. Nevertheless, some stocks from the NASDAQ Index that continued their bull run and hit a 52-week high on Monday.

In this article, we will take a look at some of these stocks, which include Finisar Corporation (NASDAQ:FNSR), Fulton Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:FULT), Itron Inc. (NASDAQ:ITRI), NetEase Inc. (ADR) (NASDAQ:NTES), and Seattle Genetics Inc. (NASDAQ:SGEN).

At Insider Monkey, we track around 740 hedge funds and institutional investors. Through extensive backtests, we have determined that imitating some of the stocks that these investors are collectively bullish on can help retail investors generate double digits of alpha per year. The key is to focus on the small-cap picks of these funds, which are usually less followed by the broader market and allow for larger price inefficiencies (see more details about our small-cap strategy).

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Finisar Corporation (NASDAQ:FNSR) rose to a 52-week high of $27.50 on Monday. The stock has been gaining momentum since last week, when Finisar reported its financial results for the fiscal 2017 first quarter, ended July 31. For the quarter, the company posted revenue of $341.3 million, up by 7.1% on a year-over-year basis, which topped the estimates by $8.50 million, while earnings of $0.38 per share were higher than the expected $0.30. The company also saw an improvement in its gross margins, which expanded to 31.7% from 28.4% a year ago. Out of the 749 funds in our database, 21 had a long position in Finisar at the end of June, down from 27 funds a quarter earlier. However, the total value of these funds’ positions advanced to $308.70 million, representing 16.40% of Finisar’s outstanding shares, from $302.35 million registered as of the end of March.

Fulton Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:FULT) has hit a 52-week high of $14.63, which put its year-to-date return at around 11%, outperforming the NASDAQ Index, which has inched up by 3% in the same period. Fulton’s shares have been holding steady most of the year, even though the financial sector faces uncertainties due to the Fed’s actions. A rate hike of course would be positive for banks such as Fulton as it will boost their net interest margins. That is possibly the reason why the stock has been gaining momentum over the last few days. The number of funds from our database holding shares of Fulton Financial at the end of the June quarter stood at eight, unchanged over the quarter.

Itron Inc. (NASDAQ:ITRI)’s stock has had a solid performance so far this year, having returned over 46% and was boosted towards a 52-week high of $54.49 after the company reported better-than-expected results for the second quarter at the beginning of September. Both EPS of $0.65 and revenue of $513.02 million soundly beat the consensus estimates of $0.43 in EPS on revenue of $478.7 million. At the end of June, 16 funds we track at Insider Monkey were long Itron, unchanged over the quarter. However, the aggregate value of their holdings went up to to $328.32 million from $324.24 million during the second quarter and represented 20.10% of Itron’s outstanding shares.

NetEase Inc. (ADR) (NASDAQ:NTES) hit a 52-week high of $240.47 at the beginning of the week and is up by around 12% over the last month. In August, NetEase also reported its financial results for the second quarter, which included net revenue of approximately $1.35 billion, which surged by over 83% on the year and topped the estimates by $90 million. The company also posted EPS of $3.67, higher than the expected $2.61. Among the funds we track at Insider Monkey, 27 held $2.8 billion worth of NetEase shares at the end of the June quarter, compared to 31 funds holding $2.27 billion worth of shares a quarter earlier.

Seattle Genetics Inc. (NASDAQ:SGEN) has recently climbed to a 52-week high of $51.98. Last month, Seattle Genetics and Takeda Pharmaceutical announced that the Phase 3 clinical trial evaluating ADCETRIS in patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL) was successful  and met the primary endpoint of statistically significant improvement in the rate of objective response lasting at least four months (ORR4). At the end of the June quarter, 20 of the funds we track held $1.90 billion worth of Seattle Genetics shares, which translated into 33.70% of the outstanding shares. This compares with 12 funds that reported $1.58 billion worth of stock as of the end of June.

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